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Joe Concha's Pigskins and Politics follows:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: poll insanity.In the past two weeks, the polls have been all over the place virtually changing every day. What does this tell us? With the speed of information transfer, and a large percentage of Americans no longer possessing landlines in their homes, do surveys of one or two thousand folks in a 300 million population country mean…

"Saturday Night Live" absolutely skewered MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last night accurately depicting the "Countdown" host as a pompous, dishonest buffoon who regularly takes things completely out of context, or just plain makes things up, in order to lambast Republicans.Frankly, it was shocking to see an NBC program so aggressively attack a fellow employee, and to watch the excessively liberal actor…

Going into Tuesday’s election, polls show Democrat Barack Obama with a modest lead over Republican John McCain, but one group whose support of Obama should not be in doubt is the national media. Surveys of journalists conducted over the past three decades show the media elite are extremely consistent in choosing Democratic candidates on Election Day.If only journalists were permitted to vote, we…

Mark Whitaker, head of the NBC News DC bureau, got off today's unintentional laugh line when he described Barack Obama as having "lifted himself up from the streets of Hawaii."Oh those mean streets of Hawaii. You know, the sort pictured here at the Punahou school that Obama attended from 5-12th grade.  While attending Punahou, Obama lived with his grandparents.  Readers will recall that grandma…

So how confident are some at the New York Times in an election victory by Barack Obama? According to a column by the Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, extremely overconfident bordering on certitude as you can read (emphasis mine):“IT’S OVER,” wrote Charles M. Blow on the Op-Ed page of The Times 15 days ago. “I’ve studied the polls and the electoral map for months, and I no longer believe that John…

It's hard to tell whether this is a reaction to "It's about time!" complaints that would tend to come from the center-right, or to "How dare you!" protests from the left (my money is on the latter), but pollster John Zogby took an unprofessional turn in his Saturday report (to be replaced in 24-48 hours) that was released in the wee hours this morning.The substantive news is that Barack Obama is…

(Please read update about the San Francisco Chronicle neglecting to mention Obama's willingness to bankrupt the coal industry at bottom of this blog.)Imagine if John McCain had whispered somewhere that he was willing to bankrupt a major industry? Would this declaration not immediately be front page news? Well, Barack Obama actually flat out told the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Gate) that he was…

McCain returned to offer some new, last-minute campaign strategies on "Weekend Update" (video embedded below the fold):

A beyond overwhelming 96 percent of the staff of Slate.com, the online news magazine site owned by the Washington Post, plan to vote for Barack Obama. A Tuesday posting, “Slate Votes: Obama wins this magazine in a rout,” reported 55 staff members plan to cast their ballot for Obama, a mere one person will vote for John McCain, the same number (one) who support libertarian Bob Barr. Another…

Editor & Publisher has a tally of presidential endorsements by college newspapers that puts the count at 63-1 in favor of Democrat Barack Obama. The only paper to endorse Republican John McCain: the Daily Mississippian at the University of Missippi.On the one hand, the overwhelming pro-Obama majority tracks with the long-running media narrative that Obama is king among young voters. If even…

Have you noticed a rash of news stories the past few weeks with the theme that John McCain supporters are depressed because they think he has almost no chance? The real purpose of these stories is to demoralize McCain supporters in a effort to make them them think things are so hopeless for their candidate that they need not bother to wait on lines at the polling stations since the Barack Obama…

**Update** 4PM 11/01/08 Like Obama, the folks that run The Stranger "newspaper" in Seattle are all about tolerance... as long as you believe the same things they believe. If you don't, well, then you deserve intimidation and a good "outing." just as Obama has tried to intimidate radio talk show hosts, just like he has tried to use the office of the Attorney General to quash political free speech…